


Every Story has a Beginning

by Raelyn_Sakura



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Creepy, Gothic, Shauntal likes ghosts, a goth attempts to write gothic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-01
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-09-21 10:12:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9543218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raelyn_Sakura/pseuds/Raelyn_Sakura
Summary: If Shauntal were asked to give an explanation as to why she found horror to be so appealing, she would smile and shrug, saying that it had always been an interest of hers. Well, at least since she was eight. That was when she met her first ghost, after all. And who can forget their first experience?





	

**Author's Note:**

> In which a goth girl attempts to write gothic literature. With Pokemon.

If Shauntal were asked to give an explanation as to why she found horror to be so appealing, she would smile and shrug, saying that it had always been an interest of hers.

Well, at least since she was eight. That was when she met her first ghost, after all. And who can forget their first experience?

The school fieldtrip is a much-anticipated affair, and Shauntal is initially excited at the prospect of camping (in the Desert Ruin Archaeological Site Headquarters, which is a building, but they get to sleep in sleeping bags on the floor, so that has to count for something, right?) and exploring the ruins of an old castle (under the strict supervision of the archaeological team and teachers). But as it turns out, what the team has uncovered so far is…not much to look at, to say the least.

“These ruins date back at least three and a half thousand years, which predates even the Great War that began in Kalos and rocked the entire world. It is, however, contemporary with the building of the Dragonspiral Tower north of Iccirus City…”

Shauntal tunes the guide out and hops from foot to foot, looking at her surroundings with her dark eyes. The archaeologist is balding, middle-aged, and has a drab, monotone drawl that drives her out of her mind with boredom. They have been here for ages (a half hour) and they haven’t even left the entrance to the castle. They’ve just stood around watching some men and women in hard hats, armed with trowels and little brushes, dusting the sandy floor in front of them. Shauntal has managed to elbow herself to the front of the crowd, at least, so she has a first-hand view of the workers’ butts as they kneel on the floor, brushing sand away delicately only for more sand to blow in from the desert outside to take its place. But she isn’t interested in seeing what the archaeologists are doing. She’s interested in the gorgeous mural that she can see at the back of the foyer. 

It’s of a giant moth-like Pokémon, surrounded by fire. The details in it, even after three and a half thousand years, if the guide is to be believed, is spectacular. There seems to be a glint in the small, black eyes, suggesting life. Its gray body is covered in a silvery powder that catches the artificial lights set up around the foyer. She’s staring directly at the mural, so she sees the little girl materialize from the wall as if the mural was a door. 

The girl stands, staring at all of the diggers set out before her. She looks about Shauntal’s age, in a thin black smock that teases the floor. Bare feet poke out from under the hems of the skirt. Her black hair is elaborately braided back from her face, and she has strange markings around her eyes. As Shauntal is looking at her, the girl suddenly meets her eyes from across the room. There is a moment, a heartbeat, and then the girl is reaching a thin hand out towards Shauntal. Her shoulders are shaking, and Shauntal realizes that the girl is crying.

Shauntal frowns and interrupts the guide. “What’s wrong with that girl over there?”

The adult stops, face pinching in an attempt to remain patient, and gives Shauntal an overly large smile and looks to where she is pointing. “What girl, sweetie?”

Shauntal can clearly see the girl, now crouching on the floor and wracking with sobs, from across the room. “The one crying in front of the picture of the Pokémon. Why’s she sad?”

The guide squints and turns back. “There is no girl,” he says brusquely. “Now can you please be serious and listen when I’m talking?” He forces that same sickly sweet smile again. “Sweetie,” he adds as almost an afterthought.

“But she’s right there!” Shauntal can feel herself getting upset. “She’s right there and crying!” Can’t anyone see? The girl stands out sharply in her black dress against the sandy floor. The girl is now moving, running back and forth and peering in the workers’ faces. She’s mouthing something, and suddenly Shauntal knows what it is.

“Mother? Mother?” the girl is whimpering. 

“She’s looking for her mommy!” Shauntal shouts, even as one of her teachers takes her arm with a sharp reprimand. The girl is now back in front of the mural and it sitting on the sandy floor, curled in on herself in despair. “Help her!” Shauntal screams. She feels herself being dragged back outside and makes a decision. If no adult was going to help that poor little girl find her mommy, Shauntal would.

With a twist of her arm, she breaks free from her teacher and ducks under the flimsy wooden barrier separating the archaeologists and the school children. There are shouts from her teachers and a couple of the archaeologists she runs by, but she pays no heed, instead running towards the form of the girl, who looks up at her and raises her hand, mouth open and dark eyes wide. And suddenly Shauntal is falling.

She’s sinking quickly into the grasping, sucking sand, and it’s no time at all before she’s falling in the dark.

Shauntal hits the ground hard, but her fall is broken by what seems to be a pile of soft sand. She lies there for a moment, stunned, and then slowly opens her eyes.

There is no difference when she opens her eyes. She’s in pitch black darkness. She can’t see the fingers she holds directly in front of her eyes. It’s silent, and the air is musty, like it is when she goes into old houses that haven’t been lived in. She strains her ears to their max, but can’t hear anything. Not the sound of the distant workers, not the sound of her breathing, certainly not the sound of anyone coming to get her.

“H-help,” she whimpers, and is surprised to hear her own voice in the silence. “Help!” she calls loudly, and her voice seems to be absorbed by the surrounding air. Shakily, she gets to her feet, hands outstretched to try to feel her way around. “Help!” she calls again, and again, and again, but no answer is heard.

She suddenly hits what seems to be a step and trips, hitting hard, unyielding stone covered in a layer of sand. She whimpers and takes a deep breath, immediately regretting it when gritty sand is inhaled into her lungs. She coughs violently, her lungs hacking and trying to get sand out. She can feel it, little annoying grains lodged in her windpipes, and between that and the inability to see, she panics and flails around in front of her, stirring up more sand and breathing it in because now she is hyperventilating and drowning in sand and she’ll never see mommy or daddy again, and-

“Don’t.”

The command comes on a whisper of breath directly into her ear, and the shock of hearing another voice in the darkness with her is enough to make her choke and freeze, not even daring to breathe. 

“Shhhh. Sit up and breathe.”

Shauntal immediately obeys, shooting up and gasping in a deep breath. And then she promptly doubles over and coughs out what seems to be an ocean of sand. A little stream of bile comes out with it, leaving a sour taste in her mouth. She whimpers, mouth painfully dry.

There is a breath of wind on her neck as her hair is brushed out of the way, and she screams and jerks away.

There is a sob near her, no more than a whisper, a suggestion of a voice, but there nonetheless, and Shauntal stops screaming.

“Are you the crying girl?” she asks. 

“I want my mommy,” the voice answers. 

“I want my mommy too,” Shauntal whimpers. “I don’t want to be down here.”

“They left me down here. They left me here and I cried and cried but mommy didn’t come back. Mommy was crying too, and Daddy, even Daddy was crying. He is a big king, and kings are not supposed to cry. But he cried and left me here in a box with some toys. And I couldn’t move my body in the box, and they left me! I saw my body in the box, and I saw them leave, but I couldn’t follow them. I couldn’t move!”

Shauntal sobs with the girl as she talks. “I want my mommy and daddy to get me. I don’t want them to leave me. I want to go!”

The sobbing girl stops for a moment. “Do you want to see my box?”

Shauntal doesn’t, she really doesn’t want to see the girl’s box, but suddenly there is a faint glow lighting up her surroundings.

She is sitting on a stone dais, in the center of which is a small wooden coffin. She knows it is a coffin, because when her grandma passed on they put her in a coffin, and suddenly she knows why the girl can’t move her body.

“I’m sorry,” Shauntal whispers, fresh tears welling up in her eyes. She can’t see the girl anywhere around her, and the light is coming from nowhere, but she can’t bring herself to be scared, because the girl was left here all alone in the dark, and she must have been so scared too…

Shauntal scrambles to her feet and lays her hand on the coffin. It’s old, so old, she can tell, because the wood is faded and the paint on it chips off on her hand. She feels a presence behind her, and turns.

The little girl is carrying a gold mask, clutching it in her hand, and she cries as she looks at it. Slowly, she lifts her eyes up to Shauntal, and her irises are crimson. As Shauntal watches, the girl passes her, feet not touching the floor, instead floating a few inches above it. The mask is a perfect rendition of the girl’s face, down to her long lashes and dainty nose. The girl bends over her coffin and lets out another sob.

“I want to leave. Is there a way? I want to see my mommy.” Shauntal’s desperation is rising. “Please. I want my mommy.”

The girl looks at her with her strange crimson eyes. “Can you float? I can float up to the room above. But I can’t leave it.” She sobs again and lifts her mask up as if to hide her face.  
Shauntal shakes her head. “I can’t float.”

The girl looks at her for another minute, then back at her coffin, then to a corner of the room that Shauntal hasn’t yet noticed. She has been too consumed with the girl and her coffin to notice anything else. There, in the corner of the room, is a set of sand-covered stone steps.

Shauntal gives a cry of delight and rushes towards them, flinging sand everywhere in her attempt to get to the stairs. Then, she notices the light dimming. She reaches the stairs just as the light goes out completely.

“You’re going to leave me down here too,” comes the whisper. The sobs renew, louder than before, and Shauntal’s heart breaks.

“You can come with me,” Shauntal whispers back. “Come up the stairs with me, and we can show the people upstairs where your box is, and they can come get you.” Shauntal sniffs. “Then, you won’t have to be alone anymore.”

“Really?” comes the whisper, directly in front of Shauntal. “Will you be my friend?”

“Yes,” Shauntal said. “We will be friends. No one deserves to be alone. You can come home with me. I’m sure my mom won’t mind if I bring you back to our house. She can be your mommy too.”

“That sounds…wonderful,” the girl sighs, and just like that, the glow is back, gently casting light on the stairs. 

Shauntal races up the stairs, through twists and turns and eventually comes out into a large room. The room has four sides of stone, with no doors or windows, and Shauntal’s heart sinks. Of course. The girl can meld through walls. Shauntal can’t. She’s just about to start crying again, when a ball of light moves past her and stops in front of the farthest wall from the stairs. It hovers there, casting light on a huge mural identical to the one Shauntal saw in the foyer. The large moth Pokémon is even more impressive this close, huge wings spanning the length of the room, beady black eyes glinting in the light cast from the ball.

Shauntal approaches, and then begins to hear sounds. Human sounds, from the other side of the wall. There is a flurry of voices, frantic chattering buzzing continuously on the other side of the wall like a flock of distressed Chatot. And there, directly in front of the ball of light, is the vague outline of a door.

Shauntal rushes forward and bursts through the door, onto the other side of the wall. The daylight coming in from outside blinds her, and she stands for a minute blinking. The voices quiet, and then there is a woman’s shriek.

“Shauntal!!!”

“Mommy?” Shauntal screams back, and suddenly she is being lifted off the ground by her father, breathing in his scent as her mother places her thin hands on her back, sobbing hysterically. Shauntal is crying too, and her tears blur the outline of the girl in black hovering in the open doorway. The girl shifts and morphs as Shauntal’s tears blur her vision, and Shauntal lifts a hand and reaches towards the girl in a silent thank you.

Then she is being taken outside and into an ambulance, and they are inserting a needle into her arm, and she blacks out.

When she wakes, a full day later and in the hospital, she learns that she had been missing for four days before bursting through a hidden door into the foyer. The police officers and archaeologists had since been down the stairs, searching for clues as to how a tiny eight-year-old girl survived without food or water for four full days. They found nothing, and when Shauntal asks her parents and the doctors about the tomb, they look at her strangely and tell her that no such tomb was discovered. There was no little coffin discovered in the dark recesses of the castle buried in sand. Shauntal decides not to think about it too much.

It can almost be a bad dream, except that when she is released from the hospital the next day and had gone home to sleep in her own bed once again, she had been woken from her sleep by a little black Pokémon with red eyes, carrying the mask of a little girl buried in a three-thousand-year-old tomb.

And every time Shauntal, now 24 and a member of the Unova Elite Four, finishes a chapter of her upcoming novel, she takes a minute to smile at her Cofagrigus, her best friend, who saved her life in a tomb nearly two decades before.


End file.
